


Bored Now

by Keta



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Humor, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 22:01:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3666819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keta/pseuds/Keta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time has the tendency to move slowly when you do nothing for years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bored Now

**Author's Note:**

> I meant for this to be a drabble. A hundred words, no more. Just a tiny little peek into a fandom I'm completely unattached to. Just to answer myself the question _What the hell does Whis do while Beerus sleeps?_ (The answer, I say right now, is not as exciting as you might think.)
> 
> I deny any responsibility for flawed characterization or misinterpretation of the Ki energy. I wasn't in the mood to check and re-check canon (if it even could provide all I wished to know). This story simply has to be taken for what it is, a small show of my obsessive adoration of the _idea_ of the characters of Beerus and Whis, if not of the form of artwork they happen to appear in.

Time has the tendency to move slowly when you do nothing for years.

Stargazing is Whis' favorite past-time. He would stop on his balcony and simply stay there for a decade or so. He would gaze upon the stars and see in his mind’s eye all of their worlds and the endless potential they held. The universe offered many things to ponder and numerous chances for self-reflection. Occasionally something would remind him of his own universe or bring up some old memories and he would lose himself in days long past.

Beerus was such a kitten when he first began training him - a short-tempered power-hungry kitten who wanted to learn everything at once and immediately excel at it, but a kitten nonetheless. They used to have so much fun with the laser pointer – Beerus would try to catch the red dot while exposing his skin to thousands of watts of focused light and radiation, a laser strong enough to cut through metal walls. When Whis first introduced this exercise, it was because Beerus refused to shield himself in combat, arrogantly thinking that attacking with all of his Ki would be enough to take out any opponent and protecting his own body would be a sign of apprehension he didn’t feel. But since there was no real attack power required to catch a spot of light, he subconsciously learned to refocus his energy to keep his skin from burning.

Oh, how he has grown. He used to be so cute. Now he was a young man, a god of destruction, outstanding in his field. Whis never mentioned how proud of him he was during the rare occasions they saw each other nowadays, even though the warm quiver of pride was never completely gone from his heart whenever he watched his student.

He could spent such vast amounts of time glued to his view of the sky that some could perhaps come to the conclusion that he was incapable of getting bored. That, however, wasn’t true, even though Whis liked to pretend that it was. He felt it coming for the past few months and he’s finally decided to admit it: the stars were boring him.

Like so many times before he silently acknowledged what a pity it is that their homeworld doesn’t orbit anything nor rotate around its own axis – they are stuck in space and the very same view offers itself eternally. Day and night never change here.

 

He takes to walking after that. Step after step, he wanders the temple, learning by heart every door, every inch of wall and floor. Unfortunately, his memory is excellent. Before he’s done, he knows every single speck of dust inside the place and can accurately predict the way the next layer will settle.

His infinite patience keeps him from going mad and helps him find great meaning in his lack of real activity. In the sheer lack of stimuli that is his existence, he finds the simplest things mesmerizing.

Dust, for example. As he watches one single speck of it fall and some part of his mind asserts that yes, he had predicted its movement with the accuracy to the thousandth of a millimeter, the rest of him wonders just what dust is. The tiny particles silently invade the temple of the two most powerful beings of this universe without even the slightest hesitation. Clearly, no living creature can match such bravery.

People say a god can reduce entire galaxies to dust and they tremble in fear of such power. Everyone’s attention is drawn to the big things – regions, planets, systems, galaxies.

How does dust always escape their mind? Why is no one bothered by the idea of a god who may be able to destroy a galaxy, but leaves dust behind?

Perhaps they fail to realize that the scale continues endlessly in both directions. The bigger the thing, the harder to destroy it. The smaller the thing, the harder to destroy it. Only things of reasonable size can be destroyed reasonably. He marvels for a while at this wonder of matter and existence.

Could dust be properly destroyed? Has anybody tried it before?

He gets so excited by the idea he decides he should immediately share it with his lord. If there had been something harder to destroy than planets this whole time and Beerus simply didn’t know about it, surely he’d want to know about it as soon as possible.

And besides, not to put too fine a point on it, if he denied himself this wonderful distraction, there existed a very likely chance that Whis could begin slipping into boredom inducted madness.

 

“Just think. Whenever you destroy a planet, what is always left behind? What is the one thing you somehow fail to destroy while annihilating the celestial body no matter how hard you try? It is dust. Why do you leave dust behind? Could it be because you are powerless against it?”

The cat eyes peeked at him through slits so thin they barely counted as open at all. Even so, they somehow managed to _glare_ , maybe because they always did whenever Whis decided to share one of his ostensible philosophical thoughts with his dormant master.

Beerus stretched and yawned, extending and retracting his claws a few times before dignifying the inquiry with an answer.

“No,” he corrected first and foremost. The personal pronoun referring to him and the adjective ‘powerless’ didn’t belong together in one sentence. “I leave the dust so that new planets can form from it. If I destroyed it too, life couldn’t begin anew. And I’m only the Destroyer of Worlds, not of All Life.”

“Oh.” His mentor blushed slightly. “Of course. I was only testing you. It didn’t completely slip my mind or anything.”

The intensity of the glare improved when the eyes opened somewhat. They still remained half-lidded but one could at least admire Beerus’ pupils as they shrunk in response to the light.

“That's it? You woke me up only to ramble to me about dirt?” Was it worry somewhere deep inside those golden eyes? Was Beerus concerned that his teacher's mental health might be slipping? “I really think you should do something with your time, Whis. Having fun isn't forbidden here, you know. You could always just watch some anime.”

“No, no,” Whis lifted an elegant finger. “It would be a waste to watch it now. I must keep it for when eternity becomes truly boring.”

“So you _haven’t_ reached that point yet? I didn’t realize.” Not even a sun burnt desert could be drier than Beerus’ tone.

“My lord, your own actions serve to prove my point,” Whis responded with a sweet smile. “You wouldn’t sleep all the time if you wouldn’t find it physically painful to watch the things you’ve already seen so many times that even quoting them is like Chinese torture for you.”

“I’m still denying this hypothesis of yours is valid.”

Whis pretended to ponder it again. “What could possibly keep you from looking at the same things over and over and over again, other than that your brain simply can’t take it anymore after all those decades when you did nothing but?”

“Maybe I just like sleeping.”

“More than anime?”

Dangerous, the glare now. “ _As much_ as anime.”

“As much as the newest season of Shingeki no Kyojin that just came out?”

“ _It did?!_ ” The glaring, the fatigue, the lethargy, all of it was gone and Beerus leapt right up into the air, as if floating on his personal cloud of hope and joy. He knew the anime’s second season was about to premier very soon, but he lost track of time while sleeping and he couldn’t believe that Whis was actually so kind that he woke him up on time.

Whis watched this upheaval with slightly troubled look. Before Beerus had the chance to run off, he collected his posture and cleared his throat gracefully. His student turned to pay him attention, subconsciously respectful.

“It didn’t,” said Whis clearly, in a tone that forbid any further discussion. “And while I would very much like to point out how you’ve just undeniably proven that my hypothesis is correct, I feel that an apology is in order first. This was cruel of me.”

“Wait.” Beerus floated closer toward him. He stopped slightly above Whis to compensate for his shorter frame and stared him down. “Are you saying there is _no_ Shingeki no Kyojin?”

“That is not what I’m saying. It would be _inaccurate_ since there is still the first season. What I’m saying is that the second season will come out in about a year.”

Terrible, bloodcurdling darkness – suddenly it seemed to be everywhere - behind Beerus, in his eyes, enveloping his entire body. The kind, innocent, almost child-like joy was now transforming into the power that made every child cry in fear, every mortal pray for their life. The sheer raw power that was the wrath of a god was something never felt by any other sentient being residing in this galaxy. Mortals couldn’t even hope to comprehend it. Beerus had no tolerance for people who would heedlessly play with his emotions.

“I shouldn’t have,” acknowledged Whis softly. “I should have realized how much you care.”

His words had no effect. The power that radiated from Beerus’ thin form was almost tangible and visible purple light was bleeding into the air all around. Considerably fitting, since purple was the most powerful visible wavelength of electromagnetic energy.

The room around them began to shake, thunder-like rumble growing louder and louder as Beerus soared higher. The only thing that was probably safe in that very instant was the aquarium on the lowest floor – Beerus would never hurt his pets, even if they were as detached pets as fish.

 _“You raised my hopes!”_ The words he shouted at the top of his lungs were like a slightly quieter echo of the roar the temple made as it was torn apart.

 _“And then stomped them into the ground!”_ The walls shattered and the roof was sent flying into deep space like a bizarre firework.

 _“How could you do this to me!”_ An earthquake shook the entire planet like a leaf. Small tsunami was created in the lake that occupied the eastern side of the planet and crashed wildly into its banks.

 _“I still have to wait a whole year!”_ He moved past falling rubble that weighted dozens of tons like he would side-step puddles on a sidewalk, flicking it away with all the tenderness of a raging hurricane.

 _“Why couldn’t you wake me up in a year?!”_ Clouds of dust rose up in place of the wondrous temple that once held the supreme position on this planet. Their home was gone, torn to pieces, lying in wreckage all around or hovering awkwardly in the planet’s orbit.

Unwearied, Beerus looked over at the object of his frustration.

Whis brushed a speck of dust that only he could see off his robe. His appearance didn’t have a single flaw, his hair haven’t even been swept by the hurricane. He calmly assessed the result of Beerus’ little tantrum and then raised one elegant eyebrow.

“Oh, come now, was this worth it?” he wondered, the slightest hint of amusement making its way into his words. Should his student have any more uncontrolled emotions he wished to express, Whis was fully intending to intervene and prevent any further damage, but he was quite confident in his assessment that it wouldn’t come to that.

Beerus hovered in the middle of the ruins of what used to be his temple, silent. He wasn’t about to admit that this little exercise barely qualified as anything but a stretch and as such was barely worth the effort. He knew he needn’t say it: Whis understood the limits of his power well enough to know as much on his own.

And worth it or not, sometimes it felt good to stretch, especially when you just discovered that you still have to _wait a year_ for something you dared hope was already here.

“Should I begin with the reconstruction or does my lord have other ideas?” inquired Whis. Somehow, he managed to completely drain his tone of all sarcasm and what remained was a word structure that felt sardonic, even though it didn’t sound that way.

“Proceed,” acknowledged Beerus. “And don’t think I won’t notice when you change the orientation of your balcony so you can stargaze from a different angle again. I always notice when you do that.”

Whis looked up at him, some unreadable emotion in his eyes. “I don’t do it that often. I do it only when I’m forced to rebuild our temple. Which, should I add, is never by my choice.”

“You could _choose_ your words more carefully.” Beerus finally floated down toward the ground and settled down upon the remains of a column. “And I actually think that you knew that. I think you wanted to rebuild the temple, so you can change the view from your balcony and continue stargazing because you don’t want to have to do as I suggested and actually spend your time with something _enjoyable_.”

Whis shot him a startled look. Then he smiled, but there was something guilty about it. “I’m denying this hypothesis of yours is valid,” he said. “And I insist that stargazing is enjoyable.”

“Tsk,” hissed Beerus and stretched his body on the column until he was lying on his tummy, all of his paws hanging down from it, a striking image of a big cat relaxing in the sun since the room they occupied lacked a roof now and was in full glare of the closest star. “With all the fuss you make about it, sometimes I think you don’t even like anime.”

“Don’t be absurd,” said Whis under his breath as he began rebuilding the temple.


End file.
